AK-47
1949 Soviet 7.62×39mm assault rifle
The AK-47, full name Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, officially known as the Avtomat Kalashnikova (Russian: Автомат Калашникова, lit. 'Kalashnikov's automatic'; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is an assault rifle chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, it is the originating firearm of the Kalashnikov (or "AK") family of rifles. After more than seven decades since its creation, the AK-47 model and its variants remain one of the most popular and widely used firearms in the world.
Design work on the AK-47 began in 1945. It was presented for official military trials in 1947, and, in 1948, the fixed-stock version was introduced into active service for selected units of the Soviet Army. In early 1949, the AK was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces and used by the majority of the member states of the Warsaw Pact.
The model and its variants owe their global popularity to their reliability under harsh conditions, low production cost (compared to contemporary weapons), availability in virtually every geographic region, and ease of use. The AK has been manufactured in many countries and has seen service with armed forces as well as irregular forces and insurgencies throughout the world. As of 2004, "of the estimated 500 million firearms worldwide, approximately 100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s". The model is the basis for the development of many other types of individual, crew-served, and specialized firearms.
The public source identifies “AK-47” as 1949 Soviet 7.62×39mm assault rifle. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around AK-47, Soviet and 39mm.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q37116. The Library of Congress control number is sh85003036. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1945, 1948 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “AK-47” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.